Secret Hideout. Пола Грейвс

       An image flashed into her mind. A reflection of herself in the mirrored back of an elevator car. She looked tired and bedraggled in the image, dressed in sloppy clothes, with no makeup and her hair in a messy ponytail.

       That meant something. Why did it mean something?

       Had she gone somewhere on the elevator?

       No, not on the elevator. She’d gone to the elevator alcove to get out of sight. Hadn’t she?

       But why had she wanted to be out of sight?

       Swallowing a growl of frustration, she retraced her steps. Out the hotel room door. Down the hall, ice bucket in hand.

       She’d dropped her key card. She could hear it hit softly on the vinyl flooring in front of the ice machine. She’d bent to pick it up—

       And looked behind her on purpose. At the man.

       Sandy hair. Black T-shirt. Faded jeans. Just like the man she’d spotted in the woods behind Scanlon’s house.

       “Isabel?”

       Scanlon’s quiet voice made her jump. Heart jackrabbiting, she answered in an equally soft voice, “Yeah?”

       “It’s safe to come out now.”

       She grabbed the doorknob and hauled herself unsteadily to her feet to let herself out. The dim bedroom seemed unbearably bright, forcing her to squint.

       She spotted Scanlon a few feet from the door, studying her with troubled blue eyes. He looked as if he was about to speak again, but she preempted him. “I know where I saw that man outside your house before.”

       “I do, too,” Scanlon said bluntly. “I’m pretty sure he’s one of the men who ambushed you this morning at the hotel.” He reached out and brushed a clump of curls out of her eyes. “Cooper, as soon as I can get in touch with Brand, we’re getting you out of here and back home to your family.”

       The idea of returning home to the pretty little farmhouse in Gossamer Ridge, Alabama, that she’d bought a couple of months earlier was only partially tempting. She had finally begun to think of Chickasaw County as home again, after so many years away. And she’d loved the stately old house on sight.

       But being back with Scanlon again, feeling the crackle of danger filling the air around them with every passing second, she realized how much she’d lost when that warehouse in Virginia had blown up and ripped him out of her life.

       Being with him here, both alive, both in trouble, was like taking her first full, sweet breath after drowning in grief for so many long, excruciating months.

       No matter what lies he’d told her, what secrets he was keeping now, she knew she couldn’t walk away from him and return to the new life she’d built in Chickasaw County. She was his partner. Lies or no lies, watching his back was her job.

       “No,” she said, her voice strong and firm. “Whatever you’ve gotten into here, you need backup. You need me.”

       “Cooper—”

       “Shut up, Scanlon. I’m not going anywhere.”

      * * *

      “I’M NOT SURE IT’S A BAD IDEA,” Adam Brand told Scanlon an hour of futile argument later.

       “Not a bad idea?” Scanlon gripped the satellite phone more tightly, pressing his lips into a thin line at the sight of Isabel’s look of triumph. He turned his back to her and lowered his voice. “Have you lost your mind?”

       “You were a good team once. Who says you can’t be again?” Brand’s voice sounded tinny and faint over the satellite. Non-emergency communications between Scanlon and his SAC were supposed to be rare and carefully scheduled, carried out only over the satellite phone, which Scanlon kept locked in a metal box hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the linen closet.

       “If the Swains discover she’s here—”

       “Don’t let that happen,” Brand said reasonably. “They don’t make a lot of visits there—”

       “They visited today.” Scanlon told Brand about Davy McCoy’s unexpected appearance.

       “Sounds like a breakthrough to me,” Brand said. “And the invitation came from Addie Tolliver herself?”

       “That’s what Davy said. I think it’s a test.”

       “I’d concur.”

       “But I can’t have Isabel staying here,” Scanlon added, the extra layer of desperation in his voice having little to do with his worry about her safety.

       He was still feeling the effects of the kiss he’d planted on his partner at the Fort Payne Mountain View Inn.

       Right now, she was watching him with that excited grin she got when a case started going her way, and it was all he could do to keep from hanging up on Brand and hauling her back to his bedroom to kiss that smile off her smug little face. Six months away from her had done nothing to quench the passion he’d been nurturing for almost as long as he’d known her.

       But Brand didn’t know anything about those feelings. Isabel certainly didn’t have a clue. He’d worked hard to keep his attraction to her carefully hidden, staying within the bounds of their professional relationship.

       “You’ve been puzzling over those files for months now without being able to figure out if any of the Swains are even involved in last year’s bombings. The bombings were Cooper’s baby in the first place—let her do the profiling work while you’re out in the field. She can give it a fresh eye.”

       Any other agent, and Scanlon would have agreed without another argument. He hated pushing around paper, looking for clues, much preferring to be out in the field.

       But Cooper wasn’t any other agent. “If they catch her here, we’re both dead.”

       “So don’t let them catch her,” Brand responded, reprising his earlier argument.

       Scanlon growled with frustration. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you planned this.”

       “Good thing you know better,” Brand said.

       “She’s going to need clothes. A weapon.”

       “Maybe they left my Beretta and my clothes in my hotel room,” Isabel suggested. “Can they look?”

       Scanlon passed along the information to Brand.

       “We’ve already secured her clothing. The Beretta was there, as well. But there’s going to be the matter of her family. They’ll be looking for her.”

       “That’s why we should send her home to them. Let the bad guys think she got to a safe place and contacted her family.”

       “My brothers and sisters aren’t going to believe just any old story,” Isabel warned from her position near the stove. “You’ll have to let me talk to one of them.”

       “Let her call one of them,” Brand said.

       “We can’t take that chance—”

       “I’ll have the Huntsville office deliver a new phone with her clothes and her weapon when an agent comes to pick up the van this evening,” Brand said calmly. “Let her call one of her family on the phone you’ve got.” He hung up without warning.

       Scanlon swore under his breath.

       “Boy, didn’t take long for you to go all lone wolf,” Isabel said, her tone flippant. But he knew her well enough to recognize the hurt in her dark eyes.

       “Everything here’s so dangerous,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you in the middle of it.”

       “I’m trained to be in the middle of it.” She lifted her chin, trying to look tough, but she wobbled a little, lingering weakness from the drug injection betraying her.